Ordinary People (24 page)

It is Berger’s voice at the other end: “Hullo.”

“This is Conrad,” he says. Tears blind him. His throat closes up.

“Conrad? Are you there?”

“I need to see you,” he whispers.

“Yes. Okay. Can you make it to the office in half an hour? Come in through the back. The front doesn’t open up until eight. I’ll prop it for you.”

“All right.”

He replaces the receiver; goes upstairs for his wallet and his keys. He scribbles a note to his grandparents, leaving it on the telephone stand.
Had to leave early. See you tonight after school.
The writing looks stiff and jerky to him.

Nearly light as he gets into the car. He wipes his eyes, wipes his hands on his pants again.
This is how people get in accidents keep calm keep calm.
He grips the wheel tightly, his wrists aching, his head throbbing as the grayness around him washes away to chilly March sunshine. It is thin, without power. A huge truck, gears grinding, lurches past on the Edens and he fights the panic that engulfs him, trying to think of nothing but the mechanics of driving.
Now a red light, now stop, now watch the car in front of you turning left.
It feels like the very first time he has been behind the wheel. He tries to stay in his own lane, tries not to swerve, to keep his foot on the gas constant and even. He focuses his eyes carefully on nothing but the road ahead.

The light is on, and he pushes the door open. He stands a moment in the waiting room.

“You made good time.”

He moves to the doorway. Berger is in the corner, filling the coffeepot. He says, over his shoulder, “You gonna come in and sit down?”

Outside the window, down below, a truck rattles slowly up the street. He is fumbling for the zipper on his jacket, but he cannot find it. There are pockets of tears behind his eyes. His throat aches. He stands, motionless in the doorway.

“It might help if you just let it out, Con.”

Not the words but the use of his name that releases him, and he comes slowly forward to sit in front of the desk. The tears roll down his cheeks.

“I need something—”

“Okay,” Berger says. “Tell me.”

But old and powerful voices slam into him. He covers his face.
He is back in the hospital again back in B Ward the night of the burning Robbie Clay his friend a bachelor certified public accountant the joker always laughing his sister had committed him “First I was a certified public now I am publicly certified!” that night no jokes no laughter but an agony of sound the roaring of a bull Robbie had burned himself with matches a rag tied around his waist soaked in alcohol where had he gotten it? Nobody knew they knew only that he had hurled himself into the void it could happen to any of them it lay like a disease over the floor the nurses walking by talking late that night they passed his room he heard the words “penis, scrotum and thigh ”and a wave of dizziness nausea sweeping over him he had gone to stand facing the corner of his room hands on the wall and Leo had found him “Baby he’s okay you don’t have to worry about Robbie” he had snarled “Stay the hell away from me!” but Leo would not he was the only one who could get close when he was begging loudest to be left alone laid his hand on his back “It isn’t bad he’s gonna be fine” but of course he wasn’t fine moved that night up to Three and never seen again. Buck. Robbie. Karen. Everyone he touches he has a sudden vision of himself naked tied down on a table his penis scrotum and thigh cut away

“I can‘t!” he cries. “I can’t!” He drops his head on his arms. “You keep at me, make me talk about things I can’t talk about, I can’t!”

“Is that what you came here to tell me?”

He lifts his head, holding himself tight. Control. Control is all. He tries to clamp his throat shut over it, to stifle the sound, but he cannot and he begins to sob, a high, helpless coughing sound. There is no control any more, everything is lost, and his body heaves, drowning. His head is on his arms again, the smell of old wood is in his nostrils, the warmth of his own breath against his face.

“Ah, God, I don’t know. I don’t know, it just keeps coming, I can’t make it stop!”

“Don’t, then.”

“I can’t! I can’t get through this! It’s all hanging over my head!”

“What’s hanging over your head?”

“I don’t know!” He looks up, dazed, drawing a deep breath. “I need something, I want something—I want to get off the hook!”

“For what?”

He begins to cry again. “For killing him, don’t you know that? For letting him drown!”

“And how did you do that?” Berger asks.

But it is coming from some part of him that is separate and unknown. He is helpless against it, hits his fist hard against the desktop. “I don’t know, I just know that I did!” Head cradled on his arms again, he sobs. Cannot think, cannot think, no way out of this endless turning and twisting. Hopeless.

“You were on opposite sides of the boat,” Berger says, “so you couldn’t even see each other. Right?”

He nods his head as he sits up. He scratches his cheek, staring at Berger through the slits of his eyes. The itching creeps downward, under his pajama top.

“And he was a better swimmer than you. He was stronger, he had more endurance.”

“Yes.”

“So, what is it you think you could have done to keep him from drowning?”

Tears flood his eyes again. He wipes them roughly away with his hand.

“I don’t know. Something.”

It is always this way. His mind shuts down. He cannot get by this burden, so overpowering that it is useless to look for a source, a beginning point. There is none.

“You don’t understand,” he says. “It has to be somebody’s fault. Or what was the whole goddamn point of it?”

“The point of it,” Berger says, “is that it happened.”

“No! That’s not it! That is too simple—”

“Kiddo, let me tell you a story,” Berger says. “A very simple story. About this perfect kid who had a younger brother. A not-so-perfect kid. And all the time they were growing up, this not-so-perfect kid tried to model himself after his brother, the perfect kid. It worked, too. After all, they were a lot alike, and the not-so-perfect kid was a very good actor. Then, along came this sailing accident, and the impossible happened. The not-so-perfect kid makes it. The other kid, the one he has patterned his whole life after, isn’t so lucky. So, where is the sense in that, huh? Where is the justice?”

“There isn’t any,” he says dully.

Berger holds up his hand. “Wait a second, let me finish. The justice, obviously, is for the not-so-perfect kid to become that other, perfect kid. For everybody. For his parents and his grandparents, his friends, and, most of all, himself. Only, that is one hell of a burden, see? So, finally, he decides he can’t carry it. But how to set it down? No way. A problem without a solution. And so, because he can’t figure out how to solve the problem, he decides to destroy it.” Berger leans forward. “Does any of this make sense to you?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know.”

“It is a very far-out act of self-preservation, do you get that, Con? And you were right. Nobody needs you to be Buck. It’s okay to just be you.”

“I don’t know who that is any more!” he cries.

“Yeah, you do,” Berger says. “You do. Con, that guy is trying so hard to get out, and he’s never gonna be the one to hurt you, believe me. Let him talk. Let him tell you what you did that was so bad. Listen, you know what you did? You hung on, kiddo. That’s it. That’s your guilt. You can live with that, can’t you?”

He cannot answer, does not have an answer. He leans back against the chair. He feels as if he is seeing Berger through a curtain of mist. The air shimmers between them. He is lightheaded, his bones fragile, without substance, like scraps of paper.

“The thing that hurts you,” Berger says, “is sitting on yourself. Not letting yourself connect with your own feelings. It is screwing you up, leading you off on chases that don’t go anywhere. You get any sleep last night?”

He shakes his head.

“How about food? You had anything to eat since yesterday?”

“No—” He starts to say that he is not hungry, that he is too tired to eat, but Berger is on his feet and heading for the door, and he stumbles along behind him, unable to voice a protest, down the stairway and out into the street, dragged along by the force and flow of Berger’s monologue.

“Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and
giving vent,
it is plain and simple
reduction of feeling.
Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it’s damn hard to smile.”

The restaurant is called Nick’s. The lettering is spread, in red, block letters, across the front window. It has a dirty, neglected look about it, but inside it is clean and warm and cheerful. Berger picks out a table by the window. He pushes back the blue-and-white checked curtains so they can look out on the street. He orders for them both: orange juice, toast, bacon and eggs, coffee. He spreads his napkin across his lap, looking around, smiling at everyone—the two plump, dark-haired waitresses, Nick in the kitchen, a table of burly Greeks.

Conrad sits in the chair, hands between his legs. He is exhausted, his eyes swollen and tight. He looks down at his hands, at his fingernails, bitten to the quick again. He doesn’t remember doing that. Narrowing his eyes, he blends everything to gray—the curtains, the walls painted with huge, atomic grapevines and leaves, the dark, gorilla-like man across the table from him.

“The little girl in Skokie is what started all this, am I right?” Berger asks quietly. “Crawford called me last night. He was pretty shook, too.”

“Oh God,” he says.

Berger hands him his handkerchief.

“Kiddo, you know the statistics. Out of every hundred, fifty are gonna try it again. Fifteen eventually make it.”

He had thought himself empty of tears, but without warning they start up again. He covers his face with his hands. “Don’t,” he says.

The waitress brings their breakfast, and he blows his nose, then props his elbows on the table. “She was okay,” he says. “She was fine. Into everything at school, and happy. She told me to—to be less intense, and relax and enjoy life. Shit, it isn’t fair!”

“You’re right. It isn’t fair,” Berger says. “I’m sorry. I’m damn sorry for her, the poor kid. Crazy world. Or maybe it’s just the crazy view we have of it, looking through a crack in the door, never being able to see the whole room, the whole picture, I don’t know.” He runs his hands through his hair. “Listen, eat,” he says. “You’ll feel better once you eat.”

But he is too exhausted to eat; he takes a few tentative bites of the eggs; pushes the plate from him. No go. Too risky.

“Come on,” Berger urges.

“I can’t,” he says. His legs feel as if they are weighted to the floor. “I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t have gotten you this morning. I felt so shaky.”

“And now?”

He closes his eyes. “Still shaky.”

Berger laughs. “That’s what I like about you, kiddo. You got style. Listen, what happened this morning was that you let yourself feel some pain. Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either. And the world is full of pain. Also joy. Evil. Goodness. Horror and love. You name it, it’s there. Sealing yourself off is just going through the motions, get it?”

He opens his eyes to study the ceiling, too tired to comment, even to think of a comment.

“Go home and get some sleep. You look whipped.”

“I can’t. My grandmother would hassle me all day. I can’t take the flak. She might even call my father and tell him I cut school.”

“So, go to your own house. You’ve got a key, haven’t you?”

He sits up. “Yeah, I do. I should have thought of that.”

Berger laughs again. “You would have. When are your parents due back?”

“Not until Wednesday.”

“Okay, go home, rest up, eat something, hear?”

“Should I come tomorrow? For my appointment?”

“Sure.”

“It’s okay for me to go, you think?”

“What d’you mean?”

“You don’t think I’ll do anything crazy?”

“Like what?” Berger asks. “Give yourself a haircut or something? You’re a big boy. You’re not gonna punish yourself for something you didn’t do.”

“All right.”

“And anyway, punishment doesn’t do a damn thing for the guilt, does it? It doesn’t make it go away. And it doesn’t earn you any forgiveness.”

“No,” he says wearily.

“So, what’s the point of it, then?”

Berger walks him to the car. As he gets in, tears well up again behind his eyelids. For so long he has shielded himself from hurt, not letting it be inflicted upon him. Suddenly he is naked, unprotected, and the air is full of flying glass. All his senses are raw, open to wounding.

He wipes his eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Drive carefully.”

 

 

He lets himself in through the kitchen. The air inside is heavy with the sweetish odor of too-ripe fruit. Or furniture polish? He goes upstairs to his bedroom, laying his keys and his wallet on the dresser, opening the window, slightly.

He turns on the shower and strips down, leaving his clothes in a pile on the floor. He gets in; adjusts the water to as hot as he can stand it. He does his best thinking in here. The heat relaxes the clots inside his brain, making the juices flow, and he leans his forehead against the wall, hands behind his back, as the warmth spreads downward from his neck to his shoulders, his buttocks, the backs of his knees.

He closes his eyes, sees Berger, a confident, sly gorilla riding a unicycle in a red felt jacket, eating a banana. Berger smiles and waves. Gorillas don’t ride unicycles, though. The only one he has ever seen sat inside a huge truck tire suspended from a chain in his cage at the zoo. He rocked back and forth, sticking his tongue out at the world. Making judgments. He and Buck pondered the primitive intelligence of this gesture:
People laugh but maybe he knows something, Buck said. We wouldn’t laugh if he gave us the finger, would we?